Ask Ars: What’s the best way to back up my computers on-site?

Ask Ars looks into ways to back up your data on-site with methods of varying …

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There's almost no end to backup solutions and configurations these days, and virtually no excuse for not backing up your computer. Even if you have only a few important files, it's worth it to shell out for an 8GB USB flash drive to store copies on; if you don't, you'll cry out that $20 you saved in anguished tears.

For the most part, backup storage solutions vary on three axes: speed, cost, and flexibility. We'll go over a few different types of storage, and you can determine what's best for you based on your setup.

The most basic solution is to back up to an external hard drive ($75-100 for 1TB) connected directly to your computer using the backup program that comes with your operating system (Backup and Restore Center on Windows, and Time Machine on OS X). Both of these can be automated to back up new files and changes to files on a regular basis, and it's a great, simple option if you only have one computer. Be warned, though: magnetic hard disks aren't known for their reliability, so while having a copy of your critical data on two hard drives (i.e., the one in your computer, plus the external one) is better than having it on one drive, you'll be even better protected if you spread your data around to multiple hard drives (see the RAID discussion, below).

This setup is low on flexibility and cost, but you have some choices you can make on the issue of speed. USB 2.0 is the most common interface, but it's a little slow, maxing out at 480Mbps for a bulk transfer. If you want to bump up the speed, drives with an eSATA interface can transfer data at up to 6.0Gbps, but you'll need a way to integrate this port into your computer (such as an ExpressCard slot). If you want to pursue this, be warned that eSATA backup systems are usually pretty intense hardware, with multiple drive bays and RAID capability, like this 4TB Cavalry array for $379. FireWire 400 and 800 ports are good for data transfers, at 400Mbps and 800Mbps, respectively, but are primarily found on Macs.

Someday, USB 3.0 will be a big player on the data transfer field at 5Gbps, but it's not quite widespread yet, and you'll likely have to shell out extra cash to get this interface in both your computer and your storage drive. On the same local storage note, if you only have a desktop computer to back up and have a spare hard drive bay, you can pop a hard drive in there and use it for data storage ($70-90 for 1TB).

If you need to back up multiple computers, in theory, you could just Sneakernet a single portable hard drive between the machines. But if you want a solution with a little more finesse, network-attached storage (NAS) may be a good route to take. NASes are essentially small, low-power computers with lots of storage that connect to a router, and are meant to be accessible over your home network.

NASes are more flexible than single external hard drives, and many come with media sharing features. They vary in both storage size, data writing speeds, and cost ($120 for 1TB, $500 for 6TB and beyond), but if you're looking for fast writes, NASes aren't great, or at best will require some extra equipment: they get about 30Mbps using USB 2.0, and 100Mbps with gigabit Ethernet, which requires that you have a gigabit Ethernet router (around $60-80) connected directly to your computer.

Rather than buy a NAS, you can make your own by buying parts and plugging them all together, or putting a giant hard drive into an old, unused computer, plugging it into your router, then installing FreeNAS on the system. This isn't the user-friendliest of approaches, but it's a fun project if you're a tinkerer.

Likewise, you can make a sort of bootleg NAS by attaching an external hard drive to a stationary computer and then sharing it over your home network for all the other computers to throw backups to, even over WiFi. There's not much speed or security to be had here, and you should bear in mind that the computer will always need to be on. But if those things aren't of concern and you have the materials on hand, it's a fine option.

As noted above, though, it's not good to pin all your backup hopes on a single, failure-prone hard drive. In fact, many techies don't even consider a single hard disk to be a real backup option—you need at least two disks to meet a minimum threshold of safety. So if you're going the NAS route, you should definitely consider getting a NAS that supports a RAID 1 configuration. RAID 1 mirrors data between two drives, and if one fails, the other still has a copy. You actually need two hard drives to execute this, but it's a good idea if you want to be sure to keep a long history of hard drive images.

You ask about DVDs, and while the idea of backing up an entire computer to them makes me cringe, it can be fine for small files. A stack of 100 writeable DVDs is about the same price as an 8GB flash drive, but if the size of your backup is the size of a DVD or less, it will be far less painful to automate it to go on a USB flash drive, and faster (DVDs write at about 20Mbps). You can even install FreeNAS on the stick, if you so desire.

Blu-ray discs are moderately less painful-sounding, as one BD holds about 25GB of data (dual-layer discs hold 50GB). But this can become an expensive setup the more you back up, and you should be backing up often—a Blu-ray burner costs about $90, and BD-Rs are about $20 for a 25-pack, or 625GB of data. For comparison, you can easily get a 1TB hard drive for under $100, and use it over and over.

We've focused a lot on speed here, but keep in mind that if you're not doing a lot of file-changing or creation, then speed isn't all that important, as most backup systems don't write each backup from scratch; instead, they just write the changes and new stuff. For example, if you are editing videos and backing them up, you need all the speed you can get, but if you mostly deal in smaller files, going from 100Mbps to 400 won't make much of a difference to you and you can stick to lower-key, lower-cost ports or networked backup setups.

Nota bene: We have limited the focus of this Ask Ars exclusively to on-site backups, as that was the question submitted. There are obviously other options beyond those described here. Online services such as Mozy and IDrive offer secure backups in the cloud, often for a few bucks a month. We also did not touch on ways to move your backups off-site or even why you should think about where your backups should live for the same reason. If you've got more backup-related questions, hit us up at ask@arstechnica.com.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

Why would I only get 100 Mbps with gigabit Ethernet? The giga in gigabit is standing for 1000 -> 1000 Mbps. Off course, if the disk writes are the limit for this machine, then normal 100 Mbit network would also do.

No mention of Windows Home Server? It backs up PCs and Macs automatically. Computer went to crap... just pop in the recovery cd and everything will be restored. Need something on one of you are away from your computers but... no pronblem, WHS sets up a personal website where you can recover any file from any of you computers you have backed up. I think you are doing a disservice to your readers by not letting them know about WHS.

I used two types of backups 1) backup all pertinent data from all my computers (4) in the house to a server I'm running in the basement, and 2) backup that same data to DropBox. I've got less than 1 GB of important data across all my PC's so using the free DropBox works for me.

Also, since I've never heard of Mac's "Time Machine", when I read that as a possible solution for backing up your data I assumed that you had invented a real time machine and was trying to market it.

No mention of Windows Home Server? It backs up PCs and Macs automatically. Computer went to crap... just pop in the recovery cd and everything will be restored. Need something on one of you are away from your computers but... no pronblem, WHS sets up a personal website where you can recover any file from any of you computers you have backed up. I think you are doing a disservice to your readers by not letting them know about WHS.

While I think WHS is awesome for backing up, it is probably overkill for a lot of users. For me, I love it and it really works for my 4 PCs that it backs up as well as media hosting. But it's an expensive solution for a 1 or 2 computer household.

One needs an off site backup. Theft/fire can destroy the data and any backup solution that is located on the same premises. For documents DropBox will work fine, though I'd still have a USB or hard drive backup. With a lot of photos and videos, a portable hard drive works for me. I use SyncToy in 'Contribute' mode and keep one drive at home and one at work. It's a manual process, but this way I don't need to run any backup/restore software. The files are easily accessible.

I expect more from ARS, I'm kinda disappointed in this article. You guys are usually so thorough. This should have been a 4-5 page feature article, if not more, and half of what's in it is plain wrong or bad advice. I'm not being mean, I'm being honest. I love this site and respect the authors, but this article was underdone and i think if a few more people reviewed it before posting, it never would have been posted.

- no mention of online services at all. Often the cheapest and easiest solution for people with a moderate amount of data. ($5 a month is nothing for [piece of mind). - no mention of getting ANY of your data off-site. - No notes at all about WHY to back up (common causes), other than HDD failure? Virus, Fire, Flood, Lightning strike, user error, vindictive actions by family, or theft; ALL of these will most likely destroy both the PC and the backup at the same time. - eSATA solutions are NOT expensive, unless you need multiple drives. You shoudl only need multiple drives if your PC itself already HAS multiple drives (as finding a larger, slow drive for backups is easy, and eSATA solutions are normally only $20-30 more than USB, and there ARE cheap 2 drive external caddies at 4 and even 6TB under a few hundred bucks. You don't need a Drobo for backup (though it;s a nice to have, especially for rotating offsite disks, but anyone with that much data and a care to protect it probably didn't need this article). - WHS, not mentioned why?- You do NOT need RAID in your backup system. Its already a copy, and the odds drives in 2 separate systems will fail at the same time is actually less than them failing in a single system at the same time. If you have data enough that it is important to have RAID, you should have a 3rd, off-site copy, and that is far better than RAID itself.

Real advice:

If your backup is USB or SATA, DO NOT leave it plugged in except when doing backups (or have 2 and swap them periodically). Anything other than a simple hardware failure (one of the LEAST likely causes of data loss),

If you backup is NAS (including the cheap option, using a network share on a disk connected to your home router), it should be in a different room on a different breaker and plugged into something better than a simple surge protector (a UPS with AVR).

You should, at least for your critical files (tax records, family photo and video you don't want lost, important documents, etc) have SOME form of off-site backup. Simple tools like SyncToy from Microsoft or rsync on OS X can make moving a small amount of data (less than 16-32GB) to a USB drive you can leave with a friend or family member and swap every few weeks (many are easy to secure too, eliminating that worry), or if you have more use an online backup service like BackBlaze. Even a Drop Box or Live mesh or iDisk sync with 5-20 GB (aka free) can be enough to real-time protect your most critical files and folders.

If it's not automated, it's not happening... If you're not getting reports when it DOES happen, it's not happening... If you have not recovered files from your backups (and not just the most recent one), pretend they don;t exist, because you probably WON'T be able to recover when the time comes if you didn't plan ahead.

Its not just your files you need offsite, but your MEDIA, license keys, etc. Make copies and/or ISOs of everything you need to re-install every PC in your house and ensure ALL of that data is not only backed up, and stored in a safe place, but at least the OS, driver disks, and backup software itself (to access the backups) is accessible! A backup you can't access because you lost the encryption key to the disk, or because your software was so out-of-date you can't get a new copy that reads your old backups is useless! If you use online backup sites, make sure you document your account information and passwords (they often can NOT reset them for you, unlike most other web sites).

A fire safe is NOT a media safe. The internal temperature of a fire safe is only guaranteed to stay under 300-400 degrees in a fire. It protects PAPER, not plastic and metal. Media safes are MUCH more expensive, and rare. (its cheaper to have an alternative backup solution other than leaving backup disks on site.

Don't forget to image the OS! Data is one thing, but the programs, settings, options, etc, you spent years making your PC work the way you wanted, and nthough you can get an OS up and running in a few hours, restoring a PC to it;s prior state can take weeks of effort in spare time here and there, and it will never be the same. You'll undoubtedly completely forget about apps you had installed, not have installers, have lost e-mails containing install keys, etc. IMAGE THE OS. (and in Windows, you MUST use the DVD option, the HDD imaging system in Vista and Win 7 is bugged. The only restorable image backup written to disk or network share is the FIRST one made, all subsequent image backups will fail. you have to use DVDs, or a 3rd party imaging software package.

Forget tape. Tape shelf life is short and drives are finicky and expensive. HDDs are cheap, you know PCs will have a port to access them for 10 year +, and when NOT spinning they survive 300G shocks, higher than normal temps, and they're not incurring wear (HDDs fail because the bearings fail or head system fails, due to wear; that doesn't happen when they're parked).

Every situation and need is different. You likely need MULTIPLE backup strategies, not just one. Some files might need protection the day they're created, some files you might be OK backing up once every few months. You might have half a dozen computers, or one. When in doubt, back up everything, but, you can reduce the load and cost and time investment by asking yourself these questions:- what can you live loosing? (these things should be backed up only periodically, unless you have disk space and an easy method to do it, and might not be included in off-site backups)- what can't you EVER loose (all of this should be backed up OFF SITE, and frequently, keeping multiple copies if possible)- What do you want to protect, but maybe not at "all" costs? (back this stuff us using an automated process, get it off site at least periodically say monthly?) - Can any of your data be easily re-downloaded for free? (things like digital online content often can be, and you might exclude this stuff from backup to save time/money unless it;s no burden.)- is your PC image simple and generic, or do you have lots of apps or heavy customization? (the more complex, the more necessary image backups are. They're also important if TIME is worth more to you than the data necessarily is). - do you have more than one machine requiring backups beyond what a thumb drive can handle? (if yes, buy a NAS, or a HDD for your router, and use automated network backups)- Do you want the simplest solution, or do you know what you;re doing? (noobs should look to mainstream 3rd party products as opposed to native OS solutions, accepting that OS X Time machine is one of the best so mac users can likely ignore this statement).

Agree with two earlier posters, WHS is awesome. Great fire-and-forget technology, does backups every night on all our PC's, recovery is a snap, automatically manages backups, deduplication, shared folders etc. I think it's hard to beat for ease of use and manageability, but could be overkill if you've only got a couple PC's. Obviously integrates best with Windows boxes, but you could use it same as a NAS for any other OS's.

On site backup is convenient, but offsite backup is important and doesn't have to be any harder.Possible scenario: someone breaks into your apartment and steals all the hardware on your desk, namely your laptop *and* the backup USB drive right next to it.

it maximized the value of money spent. the raid array gives you time to get a new drive if one goes bad and keep things up while off site protects you if you lose more than just a drive.

the core problem with a hard drive is you likely need to do the copy while your're gone. if you're gone and there's a fire, theft or similar the hard drive is next to it. you're also unlikely to spend time during hours to take the drive somewhere every day. this means a pickup service which you could spend the same money on an online solution. and modern online solutions allow for de-duplication to speed up the process

"John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin tie up some loose ends from the TV show before talking about backups, the onus on Apple to make them work, Apple’s past and present attempts, the failings of external hard drives, personal backup regimes, and online backups."

Quote:

Possible scenario: someone breaks into your apartment and steals all the hardware on your desk, namely your laptop *and* the backup USB drive right next to it.

For serious. I got hit up for 8k worth of electronics a few months ago. They even made off with 100+ DVDs. The only thing that saved my data is that the burglars didn't know what to make of my NAS.

It's sad that tape went from being low cost, high capacity, low performance to high cost, low capacity, low performance. Needing to back up video (video editor so yes there is a lot of it, and yes it does change a fair amount) and really there is no solution outside of a lot of expensive disks. At the moment just doing a rolling backup alternating between two destinations for short term archiving.

If you're running a NAS make sure it's running a properly advanced file system which does scrubbing and error correction. Simply having a RAID isn't really enough for anything more advanced than mirroring since it will only tell you the data is corrupt when you try to read it back. That's why you want to have an advanced file system like ZFS running, or you may get the same result by scrubbing (reading through all data) the disks regularly if you make a script for it.

Rsync is a good tool when you are copying data between machines. It verifies that the file was actually copied correctly. If you're just doing "drag and drop" in a file browser you're not certain that the file was in fact correctly copied to the other system. (Unless you read it back afterwards and check.)

Basically you can make "backups" as complicated and complete as you want. My current solution is online NAS (a Drobo FS, with some sort of "scrubbing") and external HDDs. You can get a cheap external HDD dock and plug in normal SATA disks into it. This way it's easy to bring the disk to work for safe keeping. The docks can typically be found in USB 3.0 and ESATA versions as well if you want.

Another vote for Windows Home Server. While I never managed to get the HP version I have to properly backup Macs, it sure was easy to fix my sisters windows computer when her HD crapped out a few weeks ago. Hopped on to newegg, ordered the drive, when it showed up popped in the recovery CD, 3 clicks and walked away, and in less than an hour had her computer back up and running.

Also, Crashplan can also back up computers to each other for free. This many not help if all your computers get cleaned out but if you hide an old tower case somewhere with a wired connection and a few HDs it can be your local backup. I backup all my macs using CP.

It would have been nice if the author distinguished between standard backups and archive backups.

Agreed.In fact, I do think the article is intented for home users and not small company. And then, you can assume the only need is archive backup, which covers unexpected file (or directory) deletion or hard disk failure, but don't cover environmental hazard (let's say tsunami to keep up the latest news).

Anyway, the author forgot to mention that optical devices (CD, DVD and bluray) will last a very short time (I heard a average of one year for DVD, which is a good estimation IMHO).A table with this kind of information is quite easy to make, as you can order them by the technology used:

_Optical: short life time, from 5 years (CD, average) to 1 year (DVD, average) (don't know for BR)_Magnetic: hard disk drive, medium life time, from 10 years to 2 hours (well, yeah). It usually depends how much time you will turn it on._Magnetic (or magneto optical): Professionnal backup tape like LTO, ultrium, and such, medium to high life time. The life time have been quite shortened as the backup size rised, but it is still quite good. Quite expensive though._Flash memory: almost infinite, as long as you only read it, the life time of an usb key depends on how time you write on it. Note: cheaper flash memory can be (easily) damaged with static electricity, with a complete loss of the data.

This is my own experience about all of this, so the average time may vary.

I use Time Machine for my Macs (2, mine and the Mrs') that I periodically backup to another drive and store in a safe.

I then have an Ubuntu-based NAS that backs up all my cloud servers, my Winders PC, and any other items I want to share or duplicate. I also keep raw backups of the family videos as I only backup the finished ones using Time Machine and like to have the original videos for re-editing and things.

The NAS has a software RAID1, but I also back it up via an external eSATA drive about once a month and also keep it in a safe. I have been a bit worried about fire destroying my drives so I will eventually put them in a safe deposit box. Backing up to the "cloud" will not suffice for a majority of my stuff as it is well over the cost (in time and money). I use DropBox as a sharing medium mostly, but some of my stuff lives there as well. I don't put security sensitive stuff on DropBox. Even with encryption, I don't like sensitive items being on a platform I don't own or operate.

I too love my Windows Home Server. I built my own, so it doesn't back up Macs, but supposedly the next version will support macs natively. (I assume it just creates a share for Macs to use Time Machine on, but I'd be happy for someone to correct me and tell me how it really works)

Dropping Drive Extender is pretty disappointing, but I might make the switch anyway. (Being more of a basic server, makes me think it should be safer to run additional software on it. Right now, I'm not too adventuresome for fear of breaking something.)

If you're running a NAS make sure it's running a properly advanced file system which does scrubbing and error correction. Simply having a RAID isn't really enough for anything more advanced than mirroring since it will only tell you the data is corrupt when you try to read it back. That's why you want to have an advanced file system like ZFS running, or you may get the same result by scrubbing (reading through all data) the disks regularly if you make a script for it.

Rsync is a good tool when you are copying data between machines. It verifies that the file was actually copied correctly. If you're just doing "drag and drop" in a file browser you're not certain that the file was in fact correctly copied to the other system. (Unless you read it back afterwards and check.)

Basically you can make "backups" as complicated and complete as you want. My current solution is online NAS (a Drobo FS, with some sort of "scrubbing") and external HDDs. You can get a cheap external HDD dock and plug in normal SATA disks into it. This way it's easy to bring the disk to work for safe keeping. The docks can typically be found in USB 3.0 and ESATA versions as well if you want.

Your raid info is quite wrong... First a raid array will rarely tell you that your data is corrupt - unless you run consistency checks on your array, and this should be ran every month at a min. You have many different raid levels all provide different levels of protection at a cost - drives. For the average user a mirrored array is great, but you have no parity therefor no way to verify that the data from one drive is identical to the other - and thus you could be mirroring corrupt data.I would say raid 5 or 6 would be best for large backups, most raid cards support raid 6 now, and that gives you 2 drive redundancy - so you can lose a drive during a rebuild of your array and still be OK.

But I can not stress enough - you need to run consistency checks on your raid arrays...

It should probably be mentioned that swapping your backup drive is more secure than even RAID 1, as something like 60% or more of data loss issues are caused by human error such as accidentally deleting the backup drive.

If you normally backup to one drive, change to another once a week, and then back, and you'll have two copies of most everything.

One needs an off site backup. Theft/fire can destroy the data and any backup solution that is located on the same premises. For documents DropBox will work fine, though I'd still have a USB or hard drive backup. With a lot of photos and videos, a portable hard drive works for me. I use SyncToy in 'Contribute' mode and keep one drive at home and one at work. It's a manual process, but this way I don't need to run any backup/restore software. The files are easily accessible.

For a lot of people (probably the vast majority) these days, all of their important stuff can probably fit on a single USB hard drive. Most people probably don't have to worry about multiple RAID arrays or multi-terrabyte disks until you start talking about backing up their entire collection of porn BD rips.

A cheap ION nettop has enough unused space to hold multiple copies of the important stuff.

It should probably be mentioned that swapping your backup drive is more secure than even RAID 1, as something like 60% or more of data loss issues are caused by human error such as accidentally deleting the backup drive.

If you normally backup to one drive, change to another once a week, and then back, and you'll have two copies of most everything.

That is how almost all non-recoverable raid failures happen - people replace the wrong drive and then the raid array goes into a failed state...

I understand that it is just not going to be reasonable to cover a topic like this in 2 pages and be thorough, but wow, I have to agree with the others, this feels below the quality of information I expect to come from Ars. Some of the information here is unrepresentative at best, and irresponsibly bad at worst.

Others have covered a lot of points, but I think the thing that was the worst, factoring the length and overview nature of the article:

Quote:

Be warned, though: magnetic hard disks aren't known for their reliability...

This statement, combined with the suggestion to use any form of writeable optical media without GIANT WARNINGS about the reliability of that is completely irresponsible. People could easily get falsely inflamed ideas about the safety of their data on optical media. Something needs to be said about how they should not think that their burned disc is anywhere near as reliable as a pressed disc, and frankly probably not anywhere near as long term reliable as a hard disk. There more I think about it, the more I feel this is really reprehensible, even for being just a brief summary piece.

For a lot of people (probably the vast majority) these days, all of their important stuff can probably fit on a single USB hard drive. Most people probably don't have to worry about multiple RAID arrays or multi-terrabyte disks until you start talking about backing up their entire collection of porn BD rips.

A cheap ION nettop has enough unused space to hold multiple copies of the important stuff.

That's a grand assumption these days. My home movies are 100GB and I don't really even use them that much. My photos are 40GB. My music library is another 45GB.

Regardless, the 'R' in RAID stands for Redundant and for anything but RAID0, that's generally true. That means RAID is still a very wise choice when one wants to avoid downtime. Downtime is the same on a PC as it is on a server - I don't want to waste time restoring backups or having to reinstall stuff if my drive fails. Same holds true for my backup solution. If a single drive failed in my NAS, I have to back everything up again and, if I had another failure during the backup, I'm screwed.

So beyond performance and, to some degree reliability (by the way RAID is *NOT* a backup), RAID offers convenience.

FireWire 400 and 800 ports are great for data transfers, at 400Mbps and 800Mbps, respectively, but are only found on Macs.

Tell that to my Windows desktop, which has a FireWire port. Not in use though as I have internal storage for backups and an external eSATA drive as well.

PCs have just about anything you want.

The OP is confusing the inability to enforce draconian standards regarding what's included on a PC with actual availability. In fact, PCs will likely continue to have Firewire ports long after Apple declares them to be obsolete and abandons them.

I think the author got confused between Mb/s and MB/s. The USB2 bus runs at 480Mb/s, or 60MB/s (~40MB/s in practice). Firewire 400 and 800 are 400Mb/s and 800Mb/s, or ~50MB/s and ~100MB/s respectively. SATA is 1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s or 6Gb/s depending on the version. As another poster pointed out gigabit Ethernet is 1000Mb/s (hence the GIGA part).

To be honest it's pretty poor that these sorts of facts and a lack of basic understanding of bits vs bytes made it past editing.

I've been pretty happy with using Genie Timeline to back up files while I work to an external drive -- its versioning is good protection against my occasional ability to overwrite a file that wasn't really a template instead of hitting Save As..., etc.

Then every night Windows Backup does an incremental whole disk backup plus a single system image to my Synology DiskStation (NAS). (Requires Pro version of Windows 7 to target a network location.) I do have to manually go in and clean some of them out once in a while.

Finally, for off-site disaster recovery situations and archiving, I send an occasional DVDs to my clients when milestones are reached (or to my folks for personal files) -- I've set the recipients up with big binders into which the discs are filed. (Yes, I did buy "archive quality" Taiyo-Yuden DVD+Rs from a specialty media supplier.)

I do need to be more diligent about making the DVDs and shipping them off promptly. But for roughly a terabyte of data I want to keep archived, cloud solutions really won't do.

I expect more from ARS, I'm kinda disappointed in this article. You guys are usually so thorough. This should have been a 4-5 page feature article, if not more, and half of what's in it is plain wrong or bad advice. I'm not being mean, I'm being honest. I love this site and respect the authors, but this article was underdone and i think if a few more people reviewed it before posting, it never would have been posted.

- no mention of online services at all. Often the cheapest and easiest solution for people with a moderate amount of data. ($5 a month is nothing for [piece of mind). - no mention of getting ANY of your data off-site. - No notes at all about WHY to back up (common causes), other than HDD failure? Virus, Fire, Flood, Lightning strike, user error, vindictive actions by family, or theft; ALL of these will most likely destroy both the PC and the backup at the same time.

These are things worth mentioning for someone wondering what options they have for backing up in general, or why they should back up at all. But the question-asker has already decided to back up, and asked specifically about on-site options, so that was the answer I provided.